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§ 6. The object of teaching is three-fold, says Sturm, “piety, knowledge, and the art of expression.” The student should be distinguished by reasonable and neat speech (ratione et oratione). To attain this the boys in his school had to give seven years to the acquirement of a pure Latin style; then two years more were devoted to elegance; then five years of collegiate life were to be given to the art of Latin speech. This course is for ten years carefully mapped out by Sturm in his Letters to the masters. The foundation is to be laid in the tenth class, which the child enters at seven years old, and in which he learns to read, and is turned on to the declensions and conjugations. We have for all classes the exact “pensum,” and also specimens of the questions put in examination by the top boy of the next class above, a hint which was not thrown away upon the Jesuits.

§ 7. Sturm cries over the superior advantages of the Roman children. “Cicero was but twenty when he delivered his speeches in behalf of Quintius and Roscius; but in these days where is there the man even of eighty, who could make such speeches? Yet there are books enough and intellect enough. What need we further? We need the Latin language and a correct method of teaching. Both these we must have before we can arrive at the summit of eloquence.”